Baidu’s Hong Kong shares rebound as users test ChatGPT-like Ernie bot

Baidu’s Hong Kong shares rebound as users test ChatGPT-like Ernie bot

Hong Kong-listed shares in China’s Baidu rebounded 15.7 percent on Friday as users told of their experiences with the Ernie bot, recouping losses from a day earlier prompted by the chatbot’s launch, which failed to impress.

On Thursday, viewers of the Chinese search engine giant’s presentation panned the company’s lack of a live demonstration and a public launch, comparing it unfavorably to the capabilities and free-to-use launch of US research lab OpenAI’s ChatGPT in November.

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But some of the few users who received invite codes to try Ernie later in the day began to post and livestream tests of the Chinese chatbot and do a side-by-side comparison with US chatbots such as Microsoft’s Bing chatbot, which is powered by ChatGPT technology.

One user described on the Weibo social media platform how Ernie had answered a question about the status of Hong Kong philosopher Zhang Jinqing accurately.

“The response was O.K.,” the user said.

“There is a definite gap between Ernie bot and Bing, but it is not insanely big, in certain questions (Ernie) even performed better than Bing,” according to a Weibo post by tech blogger Chapingjun, who has more than 2.4